PETALING JAYA: DXN Holdings Bhd
’s founder and executive chairman, Datuk Lim Siow Jin, has come a long way from his humble roots.
Hailing from the northern city of Alor Setar, Kedah, Lim is a living story of a person who had continued to pursue his hobby and passion as his career or work despite several challenges coming his way initially.
After many years to today, Lim who started his career as a government servant has now successfully commercialised his interests, growing it into a multi-million ringgit business outfit - through multi-level marketing company called DXN.
His endurance and patience is one of the main traits that has helped him wade through the tides of uncertainty as they came along.
"I worked in the Muda Agriculture Development Authority (Mada) when I first started off. When I was travelling to the dam to do my job, I would usually meet villagers who would use Ganoderma mushrooms for their medicinal benefits. They asked me what is the name of this mushroom and I checked it out and found out the name is also known as Lingzhi," Lim says.
This sparked the initial excitement in Lim which then caused him to do a lot of in-depth research into Ganoderma mushrooms.
The Ganoderma mushroom is one of the main ingredients which feature in many of DXN products today - including health supplements, coffee and even cosmetics and it is one of the company's competitive advantages.
"I had a strong interest in Ganoderma and I realised that it grows wildly in our forests in Malaysia. During my free time in Mada, I studied this forest produce and managed to cultivate it myself. As a company, DXN has been very successful in commercialising a forest produce and that's why we are also strong advocates of protecting the forests," he says.
His journey is filled with ups and downs and Lim says he had to be patient in finding the right ways to cultivate Ganoderma.
"You cannot start a business by plucking something from the air - so the best way to do this is to work on your hobby. And that's what I did - because if you do not like what you do, it won't last long. So if you like what you do, you won't get bored when you keep doing it everyday," he says.
"I have failed many times in finding the right and most efficient way to cultivate Ganoderma until I became successful. It is the same also for Spirulina - where I had managed to find a way to do open air cultivation for this health produce," Lim adds.
He also points out he was able to think of unconventional and out of the box ideas to cultivate these produce as he had to start from scratch.
"No one helped us. When we kept failing, and then we managed to solve it - we then managed to develop our own technical skills acquired from the process of solving it. So when one overcomes this, they would then hone their expertise in a particular field. Our method which we developed from cultivating Ganoderma is very different from the mainstream initially," Lim says.
Lim says the company's operations started off in a very small way - with one staff and one computer - operating out of a shoplot.
"During this time, I still held on to my job in Mada and we started off part time. In 1993, our sales was only about RM20,000 per month and I had to resign from the government position in 1994 as DXN was about to collapse - I had to resign to take on this role in DXN on a full time basis," Lim says.
Lim held on to his post as an engineer in Mada for ten years before venturing out on his own.
He notes that he started off marketing his products in 1992 with an initial capital expenditure of RM70,000 to set up a small farm - but there were no takers for his products and no sales for six months.
"It was only from April 1993 that people started to join us to sell our products - people were skeptical at first despite the various tests we did to prove that it was safe to consume. The market acceptance was very slow initially," Lim says.
This hurdle had been overcome once people tried it and gave DXN's products a good testimony, he says.
There has been no turning back since then as the company grew from strength to strength.
"There is power in networking. The connections formed throughout the years has laid the foundation to where DXN is today. Some of our members have been buying our products for the past decades. Our sales started to pick up - at the end of 1994 we achieved about RM200,000 of sales per month. We had many meetings with our members to promote these products. The growth is due to us having more meetings. We continue to penetrate into new countries to expand our network, thus growing our business along the way," he says.
Its sales have been growing by 10 times every year in the initial stages - reaching RM2mil sales per month in by the end of 1995.
DXN had also seen enormous growth over the years since its establishment and it was public listed for a while on the Bursa Malaysia for nine years until 2011.
The majority of DXN’s profit in FY2022 was contributed by the export markets in certain countries across Latin America, Central America, Middle East, South Asia and South-East Asia. These regions have become DXN’s key markets as a result of its wide array of products which has been well-received by the locals and through Lim’s constant engagement to maintain DXN’s relationship with the respective countries within.
